Sarah Anyoti (Canada) is the Regional Portfolio Manager at the East and Southern Africa Regional Office of the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme. On the occasion of International Women's Day, we interviewed Sarah, who shares her insights on women's empowerment and what UNV is doing in the region to promote gender equality.
Q. What is your take on gender equality in the region?
Ingrid Sierra is a Guatemalan indigenous woman from the Poqomchí linguistic community, with a Q’eqchi identity. She has been serving as a UN Volunteer within UN Women since 2016, convinced that this UN agency offers her an enabling framework to promote respect and protection of women’s human rights, a pre-condition to achieve the 2030 Agenda. On the occasion of International Women's Day, Ingrid shares her story.
Being volunteer gave me, as an indigenous woman, the opportunity to be an agent of change, coherent with my community’s cosmovision. Volunteering is an ancestral treasure that should be transmitted from generation to generation. This guarantees good living, with respect and harmony between humanity and nature. Let’s boost our communities to gain awareness of gender equality, as a pre-condition to progress towards sustainable development. --Ingrid Sierra, UN Volunteer with UN Women
For Viktoriia Unuchko, her desire to make the world more sustainable and resilient was a strong call to action. Since 2018 she is engaged in a project for energy efficiency with the United Nations Development Programme in Ukraine. Even though the energy sector is considered a male-dominated one, Viktoriia contributes successfully to green initiatives as Project Officer. This energized and inspired young woman shares her story.
Viktoriia Unuchko started as a UN Youth Volunteer Administrative and Communications Assistant. She supports the Sustainable Development and Environment Portfolio within the UNDP/Global Environment Facility project "Removing barriers to increase investment in energy efficiency in public buildings in Ukraine through the ESCO modality in small and medium-sized cities".
Đurđica Kazić, a young psychologist engaged as a national UN Youth Volunteer, and Aleksandra Jovanović, an expert on women's economic empowerment, serve in Kosovo* (as per UN Security Council Resolution 1244). They committed to empower each other through a unique possibility for the new generation of women leaders – the mentorship initiative. On the Occasion of International Women's Day, they share their story.
This undertaking aims to develop young women’s leadership capacities to become agents of change for their communities, contributing to social cohesion.
I strongly believe in the solidarity and connection between women. Young women need just a bit of support to experience big changes. --Aleksandra Jovanović
African countries and WHO are redoubling their efforts to strengthen people’s health and well-being in a region with some of the highest rates of disease in the world. With the Africa Women Health Champions, UNV and WHO will recruit early-career women professionals to promote health across the 47 countries where WHO is present on the continent.
African countries and WHO are redoubling their efforts to strengthen people’s health and well-being in a region with some of the highest rates of disease in the world. With the Africa Women Health Champions, UNV and WHO will recruit early-career women professionals to promote health across the 47 countries where WHO is present on the continent.
UN Volunteer Queenie Law (Hong Kong, SAR China) shares her journey in aspiring for a world of gender equality. She has been serving with UNDP in Lao PDR as a Gender and Social Inclusion Support Officer since July 2019.
Growing up in an open and forward-thinking environment, I am grateful for the fact that no one ever told me what to do, or what not to do, simply because I was a girl. For me, women are definitely strong enough to play crucial roles beyond the stereotypes that define them otherwise. My gender identity has, and should, never limit my potentials or aspirations.
In the lead-up to Zero Discrimination Day 2020, we reflect on how UN Volunteers Zhai Xinyi and Tian Liang are advocating for a world free of discrimination and stigma. As UN Volunteers, they have contributed towards UNAIDS’ mandate to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Xinyi has been serving as a Programme Assistant at the UNAIDS China Office since 2019. Before serving as a UN Volunteer, she was an intern at UNAIDS China Office and the Headquarters in Geneva. She completed her studies in Global Health at the University of Washington in the United States.
The Government of Bangladesh will fund these UNV assignments. With this agreement Bangladesh becomes the first country to enter into an agreement with UNV, to deploy civil servants. Bangladesh is also the first South Asian country to be a signatory to the Fully-Funding partnership with UNV.
The tenth session of the World Urban Forum (WUF) was hosted hosted last week under the theme “Cities of Opportunities” to highlight sustainable urbanization as imperative in ensuring no one is left behind. In this context, Clinton Omusula, who serves as a national UN Volunteer at UN-Habitat headquarters in Nairobi, explains the importance of data on land tenure security and its contribution to the eradication of poverty and inequalities in both urban and rural set-ups.
As a national UN Volunteer, I contribute to the work of the Global Land Indicators Initiative (GLII): a collaborative and inclusive process for developing global land indicators and whose partners aim at making global-scale monitoring of land governance a reality by 2021.
GLII is hosted and facilitated by the Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) in the Land, Housing and Shelter Section of the Urban Practices Branch of UN-Habitat in Nairobi, Kenya.